Nomura Putting Up $1 Billion To Retain International Lehman Employees

Now that Nomura has acquired the European and Middle Eastern operations of Lehman Brothers, they'd like to actually have some employees to work in those offices (good thinking). So, they're creating a $1 billion bonus pool for those 2,500 employees to entice them to stay.

The money will be paid out over a two year period, which works out to roughly $200,000 per employee each year.

FT: Nomura is creating a bonus pool of more than $1bn for the 2,500 employees in the Europe and Middle East operations of Lehman Brothers that the Japanese bank acquired on Tuesday for just $2.

Nomura agreed to put up the cash in a bid to retain the employees from equities and investment banking divisions of Lehman in Europe and the Middle East. The bonus pool will be shared between the employees over two years.

The Tokyo-based bank said it expected to retain a “significant proportion” of the 2,500 employees, although some would inevitably leave. “Slavery was abolished a long time ago. We cannot control people in any other way apart from creating an environment which is conducive to them,” Sadeq Sayeed, Nomura’s special adviser, said.